Possible Last Week of Kwinana!

So today is day one of week six of this transfer, which means we will be finding out about transfers this Saturday. I'm pretty excited either way. I have been in this area for almost 6 months now and I really wouldn't mind staying for another six weeks. I'm really starting to love it here. There are so many good things happening for us right now, it's amazing. I actually think I'll be pretty bummed if I get transferred because then I won't get to see the progress that some of the people we're working with right now are going to make. The way that this transfer has progressed has been really exciting. We started it off with a baptism, then we were left with practically nothing, so we then had to find find find find. And since we did so much finding we were able to start having some solid teaching happening, and then we've seen those that we are teaching start to progress. And that's why it will be a bummer to get transferred because those that we have found through tracting that are progressing haven't really made huge progression yet, but I know they will. Especially this one lady we found named Jenna. She was going to come to church yesterday, but she had other things come up. But I can tell that she really did have a desire to come. Because she made sure that we were still going to be coming around on Tuesday to teach her. I really hope to hear good things about her in the future, whether I get transferred soon or not. I'm really hoping that if I get transferred I don't go too far. I think there's gong to be lots of changes happening in the mission this transfer because of the large amount of people that are going home, it's like 9 or something. I think if I get transferred I could go anywhere from Karratha or Port Hedland down to Bunbury or Albany, so pretty much anywhere in the state. I really want to stay close by though. I love it here in the Rockingham zone. It's just far enough away from the city to be away from all the hustle and bustle that happens in the city, but still close enough to be considered a city zone so we still get to do all the things that only city zones get to do, such as go to the temple, (which we are doing this week! hooray!). But enough about transfers, I'm getting ahead of myself.

This week has been terrifical. We've taught more lessons overall this week than we have any other week this transfer. Probably any other week the whole time I've been in Kwinana to tell you the truth. We saw and taught 18 people/families. Suprisingly enough, only 5 of those were active families, the rest were investigators and less actives. If we had heaps of active families in our area, we would've been able to teach easily another 5 more lessons than what we did this week. It was so exciting to teach that many lessons. We didn't reach our goal though for the week which means we can still stretch ourselves further. Yesterday after we had our dinner appointment and taught a great family home evening lesson at the Cook Islander's house, we needed to teach two more lessons to reach our goal. We tried our best though and we felt happy with what we did achieve.

On Tuesday we had interviews with President Cahoon. My interview was a lot shorter than I thought it would be, but it was good. He told me that he really appreciated the experiences that I shared with him in my weekly emails to him. I told him all about our experience of finding the Erwees, which I will talk about more in just a minute. A lot of missionaries don't share experiences like that he said so he was pleased with that. I thought that since this was my first interview as a district leader he was going to ask me a lot of questions but all he asked was how my district was going, and that was about it. I think he must have been rushing though because he had only interviewed about 5 people and the meeting was almost over by that time. He probably already knows a lot of what's going on though, especially since I always write such detailed letters to him. He is a great mission president. It's becoming very natural for him now that he's been here for about 7 months. I think everybody loves him and the changes that he has made to this mission.

On Thursday I got the opportunity to go on exchange in the Zone Leaders' area for a day. That was way fun, for many reasons. We got to teach 6 lessons that day which is way good, especially since I'm used to getting only 3 or 4 in a day on average. I think a large contributor to that though was the size of their area as well as the fact that we were driving all day. After being on the bikes all day every day and then riding in the car for a whole day, it just didn't feel right. I wanted to be back on the bikes, but then we wouldn't have been able to see as many people as we did. I guess it was just weird to me that the only finding we did was the 90 minutes of tracting that we did before lunch. I'm used to finding everywhere I go. Just being out on the bikes and talking to everybody. It was really fun to get to be in their area though. We got to see some of the members in our ward that I usually don't get to see because they're not in my area, so that was good. And we got a MASSIVE feed from Brother Bates, who is also a Cook Islander. I could not believe the amount of food that was on the table and only two plates set out. This would've been enough food to feed a family of 6... or more. It was such a great feed. the only problem was the fact that we didn't get to bike it all off afterwards, just back in the car haha. But it was great. Elder Garrard was inspired to share a message with them about temples and then brother Bates told us that their goal for the year was to get to the temple. I don't know how long they've been members of the church, but they haven't been to the temple to get sealed, so it was really good that we taught them a bit about temples and the blessing therein.

Friday was the highlight of the week I think. That was the day that we saw the Erwees again. The kids weren't there but we stayed for about 2 hours just talking to Adell and Hennie. She made one of the best curries that I have had on my mission. It was divine. And we had some really god conversation with them. They told us a lot about South Africa and why they left it. They actually got their Australian citizenship last year, and they said that they were better off now without the South African citizenship. they didn't even get dual citizenship. They said that the government over there is just so messed up, they feel safer not having that citizenship anymore. We talked about so many things with them though. She told us that if we ever just felt like a nice home cooked meal to just give her a call, so I'll definitely be seeing them again this week. I've definitely found another home away from home, and I think this may be my favourite one so far.

That night I stacked it on my bike pretty good, aka crashed on my bike. But I was definitely protected, mostly by my name tag. If I had crashed like that and not been a missionary, I probably would've been a lot more hurt. But it was all good. It's just a shame that I have to get a new name tag, I was hoping to go all the way through my mission with my MTC one. Oh well.

Yesterday we had a mission fast for our baptismal goal for the year of 2011. They want us to feel more accountable for the goals that we set so this was a good way to do that. We each individually fasted for help in achieving our individual baptism goals for this year. And so that way we would be accountable for that number since we fasted about it. So looking forward to heaps of baptisms this year.

Well, I must away. Today is Elder Garrard's (our zone leader) last P-day so we're going to go throw a party for him, and he's shouting us lunch haha. Next week I'll have transfer info for you, if there is any, but until then, I love you all. Have a great week. Read the scriptures. Pray. Ask. 2 Nephi 32:4. That's my spiritual thought for the week. If you can't understand something in the scriptures, it's because you're not praying about it. SO TRUE!

Much love,

Elder Tanner

ps. hope you got the pictures that I sent, and enjoyed them!

PICTURES FIRST! BEFORE I FORGET!

So the first two pictures are just me and my companion and then the photo from Evelyn's baptism. The third one is from last p-day, we got to use the music room at the Kwinana arts centre and I got to play some drums again, fun times. The last picture is my all time favourite. I had a pretty good crash on my bike this week and received very little scrapes or anything except for on my name tag. I think I slid on it on the pavement for a good meter and a half. So I'm going to be ordering a new one of those, but I'll definitely have a nice keepsake name tag now though haha

The Adventures of Lewis and Clark to the Land of Kwinarnia!

So my companion's first name is Lewis and I just made the connection this week that we are Lewis and Clark. Maybe that means we'll get to discover a new land together, or we'll meet some Indian lady that will be an interpreter for us and help us on our way to baptise thousands! Haha, I just thought that was funny.

We had an abolutely amazing week in Kwinarnia this week. We even got to meet Aslan (I think that's his name, right?). Haha, well enough of the Narnia analogy, but we did have a super amazing week. We got 5 new investigators this week which is just totally awesome. I've never gotten that many in one week in this area. And all 5 of them came from getting out and knocking on those doors. The first two came on Monday, the next two came on Wednesday, and the last one on Friday. The two on Wednesday were my absolute favourite. We decided that we needed to go do heaps of tracting out in Bertram because we had 0 investigators and 0 potential investigators out there. Bertram is the furthest suburb that we cover from where we live to get to on bikes, about 6 or 7 kms. So we don't do much finding out there. But on Wednesday we resolved that we would go out there after lunch and spend the whole time until we went to the Preedy's for dinner just finding people. So we biked out there, parked up the bikes, and just started walking and knocking on every single door that we walked past, just like Elder Metekingi and I had done the week before. We had about 3 hours to tract before we were going to head over to the Preedy's and in the first two hours we got nothing but one person that said she would like to have us back for a chat, but she also said that her husband wasn't going to be very keen on the idea, so we'll see how that goes. But after two hours of tracting is when the miracle happened. We had about 3 houses left on this one street and then we were going to start making our way back towards the bikes to leave for the Preedy's. So it wasn't looking too good really. So we went to knock on this house and we got let it! It was absolutely amazing. We went in, had a chat with this awesome South African family named the Erwees, stayed there for about 45 minutes just talking about our different beliefs and that, and when we had to go they invited over for dinner next week. It's not very often that you get a dinner appointment that comes from knocking on doors. They were the nicest family that I've met in ages. Probably has something to do with the fact that they're South African. South Africans are always the nicest people. It turns out that before they moved over from South Africa, they were having missionaries over and all that and got really close to them and even came to church with them a couple of times. But ever since they moved over here 5 years ago, they haven't really gotten in contact with any missionaries or anything like that. I'm so excited to go back there this Friday. I think if they have potential to become my favourite family in Western Australia, even though they're not even members..... yet! I would love to see them get baptised, but if it does happen, it's probably not going to be in my time in Kwinana. We'll see what happens with them though. They have 2 children, and their son is the same age as me, I can't remember his first name though.

So finding the Erwees was by far the highlight of the week. We've just had such great success in finding lately, it's been amazing. When we did our weekly planning this week, we had like 10 investigators to plan for which is about 9 more than we had when Elder Shobbrook got into the area. I don't know what we're doing differently, but whatever it's doing, it's defiinitely working. Maybe it's just Elder Shobbrook's Edward-Cullen-like charm. haha who knows.

Thursday was definitely the longest day of the week. We had to drive down to Halls Head so that I could do another baptismal interview for them for a 15 year old kid named Jamie. When we got to his house though, he wasn't there. So we decided to go out to lunch and check if he was home after we ate, so we did that and he still wasn't home. At this point it was about 1:00 pm and so we decided we needed to head back to Kwinana and try again the next day. While we were driving back, the Mandurah elders called and asked us if we could come pick them up because they got a flat tire on their bikes and they knew that we were in the area. Luckily Mandurah was on the way home and we were pretty close by when they called. So we went and helped them and while we were helping them the Halls Head elders called again and told us that Jamie was home now so we should turn around and come back to do the interview. Lucky then that we did stop to help Mandurah, otherwise we would've already been home by the time they called us, or close to it at least. So we headed back to Halls Head and got there about 2:15, and finally got to go do the interview. This 15 year old kid was so on to it. He definitely knew his stuff. And I could tell that in 4 years, he's going to be an amazing missionary.

We've had lots of opportunities to do service this week which has been great. We got to help our neighbour Joe with building a fence, doing some brick laying, and digging a giant hole in his backyard for him to bury some dog poo and weeds and stuff. Luckily since there is only sand over here, we dug a massive hole in like 15 minutes. And then he even cooked us up a barbecue which was great. And he's heading off to work tomorrow back to Marble Bar. Apparently "MARBLE BAR IS THE PLACE TO BE!!!" according to Joe, but it's also apparently the hottest town in Australia, with an average of 50 degrees Celsius. Yikes. To each his own I guess.

We had a zone meeting on Friday which was nice because that gave me a break from planning a district meeting. It just meant that the zone leaders led the meeting instead of me. They did really well too. They gave us some good training on planning and tracting. It was funny because it seemed like Elder Shobbrook and I were the only ones that had any input on the stuff that they were training us on. And we were the only ones that were answering questions. At some points it seemed like we were talking more than the zone leaders were. But it was a great meeting. We had the chance to do a small testimony meeting at the end. I bore my testimony on Alma 5:40. We talk to so many people that say they don't believe in God because of all the bad things that have happened to them in their lives. If that is the case, who do they give credit to when good things happen to them? ALL good things come from God. Whether they be big or small. If it's good, it comes from God. That's why so many things that have happened to me in my life and on my mission have come from God, because I know why good things happen. It just helps me to know that there IS a God. If there was no God, there would be no good things in our lives. There's so many things to help us know that God lives and loves us, that's just one of them though.

Got a great week ahead of us. We have interviews with President tomorrow, woo! This will only be my third one with him since he got here in July. So I'm looking forward to it. Lots of good stuff happening for us here. It's a shame that it has taken me nearly 5 months in this area to see this much happening, although I guess I have had 2 baptisms in this area. I feel a transfer in my near future, but I'll know that for sure by next Saturday.

I hope that you all are staying safe and loving life... and winter. We're burning up down here, however, we DID get some rain this week. Rain in January is very uncommon down here, so it was great. Keep me updated on everything that is going on in life. I love you all!

much love,

Elder Clark Tanner

Evelyn's Baptism! Happy New Year!

This week has been one of the most amazing weeks ever. Even though it hasn't been a full week since my last email, I think I've had more great experiences within the past 6 days than I've had in a long time. The two highlights definitely being my exchange with Elder Metekingi and Evelyn's baptism.

So after our last p-day last Wednesday, Elder Metekingi and I went on an exchange in my area and let our two trainees be together for a day in Rockingham. When Elder Metekingi and I were planning on Wednesday evening, we really could not think of what to do to fill our day with productive activities. There was a challenge from President Cahoon for exchanges in December that we tract for 2 hours and mark the streets that we tract. Well we ended up deciding that we were just going to take that to another level. We decided to tract ALL day. From 10-8. We knew that it would be tough, especially with the heat, but we also knew that if we relied on the Lord that he would take care of us and help us in our endeavour to preach the Gospel to everyone we met. The next morning in companionship study we were studying in Preach My Gospel about finding people. We read one verse in D&C 24:12 that we would be given strength beyond that which man knows if we talked to EVERYONE. So we made that our goal. We decided that we were going to be more bold on that day than we had been our whole mission. And let me tell you, that promised blessing in that verse is true. We also decided that morning that we were going to be relying on the Lord completely that day. Not just to help us find people, and give us strength that we needed to walk around in that heat all day, but to provide us the food and water that we needed throughout the day. So all we took with us was our phone (for emergencies) and a bottle of water each, and the pamphlets at things that we needed. We found such great success on this day, it was amazing. Throughout the day, we found 13 people that wanted us to come back. That is definitely the most people I've found in one day by far. On one street there were even 4 houses in a row that said they were interested in our message and wanted us to come back. How amazing is that?! We also were able to ask people for water and they'd give it to us even if they were about to slam the door in our face. And we ended up calling a member to bring us some food while we were taking a shade break in the park. I don't think anything went wrong that day. Now the only thing we have to do is follow up with all of those people and hopefully get to see them progress towards baptism someday. Following up is the most important part. We already have gotten the chance to follow up with one of the guys and it turns out he wasn't as keen as his friend was that was living with him and we were able to teach, give a book of Mormon, and invite to read and pray about it. Who says you can't see the fruits of your labours right away. Maybe in some cases, but definitely not in this one.

Evelyn's baptism on Saturday was also one of the most memorable days of my mission along with that day with Elder Metekingi. I was really worried that nobody would really show up for it with it being on New Year's day and everything. But boy was I wrong about that. We had about 30 people show up. That right there was definitely a blessing. Past baptisms of my mission have had no more that like 10 people there, and the experience just wasn't as good (even at the ocean baptism), but because there were so many people there, you could feel the spirit profusely being poured out upon us that attended. I asked a few members of the ward to get up and bear their testimony towards the end of the baptism and I think that was great for Evelyn. The biggest thing that we've been struggling with with her is helping find some fellowship for her because of her language barrier. But because these people came to the baptism and congratulated Evelyn afterwards, I felt like she felt a lot more welcome into the ward after that. Arturo bore his testimony last and it was so strong. He told the story about how his wife was converted and how it just happened over time as we kept teaching and she kept reading. There were definitely some tears in the room. I loved it. The next day for Evelyn's confirmation, she actually came to church wearing a skirt and everything where in the past she would usually just wear jeans and converse to church. You could tell that it actually meant a lot to her to be confirmed and become a member of the church. Even though I didn't get to be the one that baptised her or confirmed her, I feel such a connection with her and Arturo since I've been in the area ever since she came over from the Philippines and been teaching her every week since then. It's going to be sad to leave this area, and it's also a bummer that I won't be able to see them get sealed in the temple next year. But I know that it will happen. Her testimony is only going to get stronger and if it matches up with Arturo's testimony, they'll be such a strong couple in the church.

Speaking of people getting sealed in the temple. I got permission this week to attend the McGaughey's temple sealing. I'm so excited to be able to attend that. I called up Jeremy McGaughey after I got permission to go and he said that the sealing has been pushed back to late February because of a delay in the temple garments. Hopefully I still get to go in February. I guess the only reason that I wouldn't be able to go was if I got transferred to somewhere very far away. But Jeremy was still excited for it and still working towards it. I guess this just gives them an extra month of preparation. So it should be good in February. I'll let you know when that happens though.

I don't have much time to email today because the library is still closed and we're using he Internet kiosk at the mall. $6 an hour, so my time is almost up but I hope that you all are having a great week and had a great new year! I pray for all of you and your safety. Have a great week! Love you all!

Much love,

Elder Tanner

ps. I was going to attach a picture from the baptism but you know how public computers are, of course the USB slot doesn't work. I'll try to remember next week though!